This is a chart of the global market capitalization of cryptocurrency over the last 6 months.
Source: coinmarketcap.com
After peaking in January 2018, the market capitalizaion has been trending down. This means that the rate of fiat to crypto is lower than crypto to fiat. It seems as if there is a nett cashing out of coins.
But come to think of it, almost all the people I know (retail investors / speculators) who are in the crypto world are pumping fiat currency into crypto instead of the other way round. With crypto hedge funds and mining farms popping up everywhere, I would expect the market capitalization line to be a steep positive gradient.
So, who's selling?
The culprit is ICOs. It's the latest rage now as the returns are significantly higher than any other cryptocurrency investing strategy. Ethereum, used as a form of payment for ICO subscriptions, is being moved into ICO projects in huge volumes. The ICO teams sell the Ethereum they collect into fiat currency in order to pay for their real world expenses such as marketing, business expansion, staff salary and public relations.
Only when the ICO's tokens are released onto public exchanges will the market capitalization appear back on the record. The time frame between token sales and token release is usually 6-12 months, so in this period, the market capitalization vanishes.
If my view is correct, this downtrend should last at least 6 months, ie the earliest and most optimistic expected date that the market will see a turnaround will be in June 2018. The more the number of ICOs launched, the deeper the bottom will be.
